banco: West African architectural term for a mixture of earth (which may be of varied composition) and natural temper (sand, gravel, straw, etc.). This mixture is shaped into bricks (sun-dried, never baked) and used for construction. Along with wattle and daub* and rammed earth,* it is one of the construction techniques that use raw earth as a building material.
Bantustan: During South Africa’s apartheid regime (1948–1994), the word for the rural enclaves or “reserves” where the majority of the country’s black population was forced to live. Except for miners and domestic workers, who were allowed (under strict conditions) to live in urban areas, the rest of the black population was considered nonproductive and unworthy to live in the part of the country reserved for whites.
coin weights: Glass tokens precisely the same weight and shape as various coins. In the Islamic world, the token often bore an inscription with the name of a sovereign. Inalterable, these objects could serve as standards of weight or units of account.
cowrie (pl. cowries): Name for several varieties of marine gastropod mollusks or sea snails sometimes called “porcelains.” Two very small varieties, Cypraea moneta and Cypraea annulus, endemic to the tropical latitudes of the Indian and Pacific Oceans, were at the center of a vast exchange system across the Islamic world, starting from the region where they were almost exclusively collected: the Maldives archipelago. In many places in Africa, cowrie shells served as currency, decorative items, and divination objects.
dinar: Gold coin of the bimetallic (gold/silver) Islamic monetary system.
dirham: Silver coin of the bimetallic Islamic monetary system, valued at a fraction of the dinar.*
erg: Duned desert (as opposed to rocky desert).
factor: Firm clerk, under royal or private commission, who carried out business for the firm and in its name, sometimes as the head of an overseas establishment dedicated to this function, also called “trading post.”
Indo-Pacific (beads): Term referring to the geographical distribution (around the Indian and Pacific Oceans) of sites where little glass-paste beads spun of diverse colors, sometimes called “trade-wind beads,” were produced. During antiquity and the Middle Ages, these beads came from several ateliers situated on the southeast coast of India, Malaysia, the Indochinese Peninsula, and Indonesia.
ksar (pl. ksour): Generic term, borrowed from Maghrebi Arabic, designating a fortified, generally rectangular, village of North Africa or the Sahara. Before the modern era, a ksar often constituted a political unit.
metropolitan: Initially the title of a bishop of a provincial capital, the term came to designate, in Eastern Christianity, the head of a church canonically dependent on a mother church. The metropolitans of the Nubian and Ethiopian Churches, for example, were consecrated by the Coptic patriarch at Alexandria, and later at Cairo.
mihrâb: Arabic term. Wall niches in mosques that indicate to the faithful the direction of Mecca. Typically, in North and West Africa, the mihrâbs are oriented toward the east or southeast; in Ethiopia and along the east coast of Africa, they are oriented to the north.
mithqâl: Measure corresponding to around 4.25 grams, considered the standard weight for the dinar* in the first centuries of Islam. Sometimes used as a synonym for dinar.
mopane: Characteristic tree (Cholophospermum mopane) of the arboreal savannas of southern Africa. It has rot-resistant wood and is host to an edible caterpillar, the mopane worm.
rammed earth: Architectural term (equivalent to French pisé and Arabic tabiya) for a mixture of earth (which may be of varied composition), temper (sand, gravel, pebbles, etc.), and lime, poured and compacted in a wooden form to raise walls. Along with banco* and wattle and daub,* it is one of the construction techniques that use raw earth as a building material.
sambuk: Arabic term for small, triangular-sailed boats with teakwood hulls that have sailed back and forth across the western Indian Ocean from antiquity up to the present day.
shea tree: Tree (Vitellaria paradoxa) native to the savanna of western and central Africa, it produces a kernel from which a fatty substance is extracted (traditionally by grinding). This “shea butter” is used in food preparation and medicinal ointments, and as a luxury additive in coating for banco* walls, notably in present-day Mali.
township: In twentieth-century South Africa, the neighborhoods on the cities’ peripheries reserved for nonwhites. These neighborhoods were characterized by a lack of infrastructure and utilities.
tumulus: Burial structure in which a tomb—or multiple tombs—is incorporated into an artificial mound made from blocks of rock or from earth.
ulama: Arabic term. Muslim scholar, preacher, jurist, and theologian all at once. From the Sahara to the Sahel, the ulamas were the agents of Islamization.
wattle and daub: Architectural term for a mixture of earth and temper (straw, grass, etc.) daubed smooth, generally over a trellis of branches, to form the walls and partitions of houses. Wattle and daub is widely used for traditional African dwellings. Along with banco* and rammed earth,* it is one of the construction techniques that use raw earth as a building material.